The Dictator's Dilemma: The Internet and U.S. Policy Toward Cuba

Authoritarian leaders in the information age are confronted with an unmistakable dilemma. On the one hand, the Internet and associated information and communication technologies offer enormous economic potential for developing countries, and the increasingly interconnected global economy thrives on openness of information. On the other hand, the information revolution poses new challenges for regimes that rely on centralized political control. Mexico's ruling party, for example, opened to the world in the early 1990s and relaxed its hold on the media but then chafed under pressure for further political reform by Internet-empowered supporters of the Zapatista movement. Currently, China weighs its growing Internet economy against the protests of the Falun Gong, whose members have organized mass demonstrations using e-mail and the World Wide Web. In countries where they can get access, networks of dissidents, activists, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have shown that the Internet can be a useful tool in pressuring an authoritarian regime to change. So far, however, Cuba has been successful in staving off such political dangers of the Internet.

Unlike the telephone, which facilitates one-to-one communication between dispersed individuals, or radio and television, which allow for one-to-many broadcasting from a central location, the Internet is a many-to-many medium that permits each user to send to, and receive from, a multitude of recipients and sources. As such, it does not lend itself to centralized control. The interconnected, transnational nature of the Internet complicates the task of censorship. Readily available tools to conceal identity and the encryption embedded in commercial software make it harder for authorities to keep watch on their citizens. Inexpensive pricing (compared to international phone and fax calls) facilitates networking among civil society actors. While none of these factors mean that governments will fail to control the technology, each poses new and significant challenges to regulators in democratic and authoritarian regimes alike.

Indeed, the dictator's dilemma is real--but it may not be insoluble. ¹ Protest does not equal democratization, and the Internet has yet to take a lead role in the demise of any authoritarian regime. Conventional wisdom may suggest that information-age dictators are doomed to downfall or economic extinction, but authoritarian regimes do not give up so easily, and few accept the inevitability of their decline. Most have sought to control the Internet in some way, minimizing subversive use of the medium while extracting tangible benefits. Different regimes have taken different approaches, and some are quite willing to err on the side of caution, promoting access to the Internet where it directly benefits the regime and restricting it everywhere else. Such strategies are inevitably a compromise between political control and economic dynamism, but compromise is not capitulation. While an all-good-things-go-together optimism pervades much of today's thinking about the Internet's political impact, many authoritarian regimes are successfully staving off the dictator's dilemma.

Cuba is a case in point. In the aftermath of the Cold War, the United States has increasingly sought to promote democracy in Cuba by technological means. Since the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, international telecommunications have been strategically exempted from the U.S. embargo, and U.S. policy has attempted to engage the Cuban people through greater information flow.

During this period, the Cuban government has slowly but steadily allowed the development of its connection to the Internet. Contrary to the hopes of U.S. policymakers and Cuban exiles, however, the information revolution has failed to vanquish the Cuban revolution. Almost a decade after the regime first began to experiment with international computer networking, it is as authoritarian as ever. Hardliners are firmly in control of the government, and the government is still firmly in control of the Internet.

Cuba's cautious response to the Internet has been shaped by the economic and political incentives the regime has faced, as well...